Local Search - a budding service for SEO firms to&nbspoffer

This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

Before I begin, allow me to thank the fantastic blog "Understanding Google Maps and Yahoo! Local Search" - I highlighted three blog entries at the bottom from the blog which helped me form my ideas.

Local Search Optimization has a chance to become its own niche market (if it hasn't already). I found one SEO firm running AdWords for "Local Search Optimization" - I expect there to be much greater competition at the end of the year for this term.

Usage of Google Maps was up 62% in 2006 as compared to 2005, and the number is expected to increase. The one box, or the box above the organic listings which integrates up to 3 local search results with address, phone, url, and a corresponding map, is prime real estate.

Example: Hotel industry

At my interactive agency, we have a client who owns an independent luxury hotel. In our efforts to market the site, we noticed that while we haven't hit the front page in Google for our target keyword in organic results (yet), we were lucky enough to show up as the first local listing in the one-box for the target keyword.

Some of our link-building efforts rendered us a listing of the hotel and address but no link. While we initially thought this provided us good exposure but no search benefit, it turns out to be a factor in local search optimization:

“In fact one of the first things you notice is that your “links” don’t require a link at all just an actual street address and a business name that matches what Google thinks it should be” (A. What does a link campaign look like for local?).

It also appears that the quantity and quality of consumer reviews (i.e: hotel reviews in TripAdvisor, CitySearch, TravelPost) are a factor in Local Rank: Not only do you want to have as many reviews out as possible, but it helps for them to be positive: Google aggregates all of the user reviews on these travel guides and gives its own score. (1 to 5 stars). Instead of offering link bait -- why not offer "review bait"?

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In certain situations, it can be of equal or greater value to be the number one local listing than the number one organic listing - SEO's should take note of this in their dealings with current and future clients,

Working for one of the biggest local search driven companies it is really amazing to see how much this phenomenon has grown. Much harder than getting good rankings and getting listed in the onebox though is convincing the small business in the small town that this could be a big thing for them and the future of their business.

I think that under a different vertical, more information could have gone into this article, but it still provided some good information. Hotels, real estate, mortgages, insurance, etc. are going to always have a huge barrier to entry even on the local level. These verticals are already so saturated that it is tough to see progress and can be discouraging.

I do like the part that was mentioned that during the link building efforts that the hotel information was added to a site, but not a link. It is always good to remember that nothing should be done only for SEO. While you may not have seen a link, users to that site will now have access to that information and there will be more awareness anyway. The goal of disseminating the information was still met and the user is still satisfied so it was still a solid effort.

Local search is an interesting space. You have your IYPs (Superpages, yellowpages.com,Windstreamyellowpages.com, etc), your newspapers(NYT, washingtonpost.com, etc), your community sites(Craigslist.com, angieslist.com, etc), your verticals (limousines.com, etc), and your small business service providers (LeadStream.com, locallaunch.com, etc), etc. all competing for a share of the pie. Then, of course, you also have the engines trying to make self provisioning as easy as possible.

Is there room out there for everyone? It looks like it, although as with any industry there'll be mis-steps and consolidations, but it's going to be interesting to watch...

Absolutely, all the big players are turning their sights, as well as their sites, to this new focus. But especially with the smaller mom and pops and other locals, the opportunity may be huge to find a way to bring everything together.

These are the types that will better understand this from a marketing-advertising perspective, much more so than regular SEO talk, and these are the types that often feel like they're just a "paycheck" in the eyes of the big players.

I think if you can approach them on a more personal level, show how you can integrate local search marketing with their offline marketing efforts and then tie everything back into their website and use it as an asset rather than just a "business card," you might be able to position yourself ahead of a lot of the big players.

The one challenge may be the other local advertising venues or firms who are trying to grab this piece of the pie as well, usually poorly though.

I don't think local search has caught on with the masses yet, but it's hard to deny it's growing and will continue to grow, especially now with the addition of maps and local results in Google's 'onebox.'